


Process Stories (Klaine Advent Challenge Day One)

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Klaine Advent Drabble Challenge 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McKinley's High's art teacher considers the space once occupied by her oddest little puppet maker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Process Stories (Klaine Advent Challenge Day One)

Liz Alfano works her way around her classroom table by table, picking through piles of discarded pipe cleaners and sweeping glitter into clumps with the side of her sandal.

The mess is nothing new. She’s used to 16 year-olds dropping their scissors at the first bell, but she hadn’t expected to find the heap of baby dresses and puppet limbs at Blaine’s usual spot. Mr. Anderson might be an odd duck, but he usually wipes down his own table. Goodness knows, he usually brings his own lysol and baby wipes just to be sure that the job gets done right.

His cleanliness could explain why she’d looked the other way when he all-but moved in. She hadn’t asked how he he’d been excused from all of his classes, or how he’d gone an entire day without taking breaks to pee. It wasn’t any of her business. She had checked in every few hours. At first, she told herself that she was checking to make sure that the little fruit-loop wasn’t snorting the gorilla glue, but once he rounded hour four she had to admit to being caught between curiosity and concern. What teenager in his right mind looks up youtube tutorials on puppets  without an ounce of irony? 

She’d watched out of the corner of her eye as Blaine had gotten off to a fitful start, but he’d pursed his lips and a little blue body slowly took shape. By the time Mrs. Alfano popped in around hour six, the young man was a machine. His deft hands sewed in pink tongues, while his eyes shifted from his handiwork to the scrapbooks spread out from end to end on his worktable. Between the scrapbooks, the open laptop, the  pile of coordinated baby clothes, and a half-dozen empty juice boxes, he’d constructed his own island of misfit toys. 

With any other student, Liz would have said something, except that she had the strangest sense that she would be intruding on something private. The eye contact between artist and puppet alone felt oddly intimate, as though her classroom and her presence had long since disappeared.

With a sigh, Liz settles into Blaine’s former seat and begins sorting leftover pieces of felt into piles of red, yellow, and green. Under the chair, she slides her sandals back and forth until the glitter grinds into the crevasses of her Berkenstocks. And until her heel hits something else, something large. Liz crouches, chin to the ground, and comes face to face… with a face, or at least, the blank space where a face ought to be. It seems that young Blaine left one of his creations behind without eyes or a fully constructed mouth. 

Liz drags the puppet out from under the seat, holds it up by one tiny hand, and shudders. Blaine should build props for slasher movies on the side. The little man’s unmarked mouth gapes out of a blank, yellow face framed by dark hair. Somehow, the tailored outfit and delicately parted hair only adds to its uncanny effect. She runs her palm down the leather jacket and over the black v-neck, both fit for a two-year-old. Each clothed arm ends in a perfectly formed hand, one of which clenches in all-but-a fist, pointing down. “Look!” It seems to say. “I found the floor! You know because I’m pointing.” 

She should take it apart for scraps. Students don’t pay for their art supplies and she suspects that Anderson has used up hundreds of dollars in fabric alone, but, as she gazes into that un-touched face, she finds that she doesn’t have the where-with-all to start cutting stitches. First and foremost, Liz fosters creativity and this is Blaine’s creation, however incomplete. 

Still clutching its yellow hand between her index finger and thumb, she shakes open a paper bag and lowers the figure inside. Then she leans the bag against her desk, just out of the way. He’ll be back and, someday, he’ll want to pick up where he left off. Perhaps for this one, fourteen puppets is just the beginning. 


End file.
